Time Keeping 2018: April Monthly Review

I've some new additions to this monthly review - including new graphs, photos and parkour gifs (!). Hopefully this makes it more engaging to read, and helps to actually SHOW you the goals that I've achieved or am working on.

Let me know any thoughts that you might have - always excited to improve the review even more.

The Pie Chart of my Life

The pie chart of my life, for April 2018. Breakdown is the average number of hours spent per day.

After being horrifically sick in March and the sickness dragging everything down, things went back to normal in April...

April News

April was a pretty intense month for me. I began full-time work, and there was a lot going on with myself and the people around me. I would end up doing something every night or day, and kind of forgot that I sometimes need to just stay at home. At the end of the day though, relationships are very important to me, so can't really complain. I also got really into Matcha during April.

Started full time work!

I moved to a full-time roster at my new City store, and it's been really nice. :)

Exploring

Stayed pretty consistent in parkour, exploring and chill outdoor sessions. This is really important to me, in order for me to stay fit and happy.

Nice nights out

Had a lot of good nights in April - a house party, Lane 8 concert, a work event which I organised and a friend's bday. :)

Parkour: Trained 5.2 hours / week

Goal 1: Train 5 hours per week

Hours trained in April = 5.2 hours / week

Awesome, an improvement on March too!

I did an average of 2.1 parkour sessions / week.

Goal 2: Backflip on crashmat

Didn't get there.

Was aiming to take backflips out of the foam pit, going from a box onto a crash mat. But I started to psych myself out with them a little, and 'lost' my backflips. :(

But reviewing this video in the foam pit, I'm okay with this progress. It's a bit clumsy but reflecting now on how scary they are, it's pretty astounding to me I'm even doing anything haha.

Goal 3: Get double cats

I want them to look a little cooler but am pretty happy with this one!

Learnings:

When drilling something, a better way to learn is to keep changing it up and adding a level of challenge. Normally I would just practice the same move 50 times over and over, trying to get it "perfect" but it didn't allow me to progress quickly or get comfortable in different scenarios.

For example, a better way to learn flips would be to:

Level 1: Backflip in an easy and stress-free environment - e.g. a foam pit 10 times or until a little comfortable.

Level 2: THEN, CHANGE IT UP TO LEVEL 2. Attempt doing it in a slightly different way, even if it's a small change. E.g. jumping off a different edge, or landing on a harder surface

Level 3: Once pretty comfortable, push yourself to change it up to level 3. This will be scary. For example, backflipping onto a harder mat. It will be scary but just do a couple.

Finally, when you come back next session, you repeat the above process but starting at Level 2. Such that you quickly get comfortable with Level 2, then move straight to Level 3, then once you're good with L3, you up it again. This way you are consistently increasing your challenge level.

May Goals:

Do a flip landing well on a crash mat (either sideflip or backflip)

Get comfortable jumping to small surfaces (concrete barrier to concrete barrier jump)

Perfect double cats

WORK: settling into full-time

I officially moved into a full-time role at our city store!

Hours worked = 43.0 hrs / week

36.2 hours / week scheduled

6.8 hours / week overtime

APril GoalS:

Settle into full-time at my new store!

Hit all my number targets

Clean up my pipeline

April Outcomes:

Settled in

I hit my numbers

Failed to clean up my pipeline

Learnings:

Be confident. I work in sales but I always feel awkward when asking for an order. I realised that if I'm awkward about it, the customer can tell. Confidence is key.

May GoalS:

Shadow drives and learn from colleagues

Be confident

Better quality calls and conversations

Start thinking about how to analyse numbers, data, what data analytics skills are needed, etc.

Website: posted 2 posts!

April Goal 1:

3 sessions per week, ideally 1 hour per session

Sessions per week (April) = 1.2

Hours spent (avg) = 2.3 hrs / week

Not the best as I was aiming for 3 sessions so at least 3 hours spent per week... but at least it's an improvement from February (0.8 sessions / week) and March (0.5). So I'm slowly getting there.

Save up and move out

Goal 1:

April expenses: $1,000

+$25 over was good considering I spent a little extra on a friend's bday so to still stay so close to budget is very excellent :)

Also pretty amazing since I still went out every weekend, but managed to make them cheaper nights out. E.g. house parties, paid work events, etc.

Goal 2:

Save up $20,000 by June 2018

Savings to date (April) = $16,300 / $20,000

Woohoo getting closer!

Goal 3:

Move out closer to city July 2018

Update: Have been looking at listings but so far haven't made any moves because it's better if I do it closer to my move-out date.

Learnings:

Helps to keep budget down if I limit myself to one big event per month (this month it was the Lane 8 concert). All the other weekends, I generally tried to do cheaper / paid for events (e.g. drinking in, instead of bar hopping).